Rockwell & Huston in Choke Adaption

Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston are starring in Choke, an adaptation of a Chuck Palahniuk novel that marks the directorial debut of actor Clark Gregg (“The New Adventures of Old Christine”), who also wrote the adaptation.

The Hollywood Reporter says Kelly Macdonald (No Country for Old Men) and Brad Henke (In the Valley of Elah) also star.

Choke, published in 2001, was the first New York Times best-seller from Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club.

Choke is a black comedy that follows Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex addict who works as a Colonial War re-enactor and runs a con scheme that involves deliberately choking in restaurants and attaching himself parasitically to his rescuers, all to fund his mother’s (Huston) care at a private mental hospital.

He is forced to address his intimacy issues when he falls in love with his mother’s doctor and discovers that he is unable to perform with the one woman he actually likes.

“It’s a tricky adaptation because like a lot of Chuck’s work, it operates in a heightened satirical, dark world, yet this one is one of his black romantic comedies, so getting the tone right took me some time,” Gregg said.